Today I’ve been watching videos and documentaries on the homelessness crisis here in the United States, particularly within Los Angeles. It’s heartbreaking. We have people working full time jobs, even pooling together resources with other friends and family, and they’re still not able to afford a roof over their heads and other basic necessities.

If you look at this video, particularly at 23:34, we meet a group of young people, working full-time minimum wage jobs, living in a tent on a sidewalk. They can’t afford anything better, even working 40 hours a week. They say they’re living a “dying dream”, and they’re right. The person asks, “What am I supposed to do?” I don’t know. Nobody knows. The system is broken.

The homeless are often mischaracterized as drug addicts, missing their teeth, babbling incoherently about the end of the world, dirty, holding some sign asking for money. That’s not to say that doesn’t happen, but it’s far from how it is. It’ll blow your mind to see that many of these are normal people, who you’d never guess are living under such miserable conditions. One UCLA PhD candidate in mechanical engineering is living out of his car and showering in the park. He tells you that between tuition, food costs, and other expenses, he just can’t afford to have a place. At another point you meet a young college graduate who is living out of his tiny RV, with three other guys, which they park at the side of the road. Completely normal looking guy, articulate, everything. They’re all trying to save money, working crappy jobs, saving as much as they can, hoping to pay off their huge student loans and pay for a home of their own. This is the only way they can save money or get ahead.

I feel for these college students. I’m around them all the time. I remember meeting a nuclear engineer who was $150,000 in debt and told me going to university was the worst mistake he ever made. He was in a hole so deep, he felt he could never escape. My cousin spent $200,000 earning his PhD in political science from Oxford, and also told me that it was the worst decision he ever made. Him and his wife had to move home with his stepparents, where they were living for years, unable to climb out of that hole. His mother then stepped in and had to bail them out. They never would have gotten out on their own. His wife had a similar huge college bill, and working crap jobs, even while living with their parents, there just wasn’t enough money to take care of it. There was no future.

I meet students all the time who live off of cheap ramen and mac & cheese. Many live in small apartments with several other students, all sheltering the bills together. Tuitition costs are ridiculous and it’s coming to a breaking point where many are questioning whether higher education is even worth it. Universities keep throwing up big buildings, paying huge salaries to a bloated administration, states are cutting funding, and what not, and tuition costs just keep climbing way faster than inflation. People have to borrow more and more against their future just to get an education, and now to make it worth it, many are living in their cars just so they don’t have to borrow so much money to attend school; it just takes so long to earn your degree. It drags on and on. To earn my graduate degrees in physics, I was there for almost a decade, and I’d argue over half (or more) of that time was spent in courses which were of no value to me whatsoever. Most of the time I learned very little. To me, I was just going through a long formality and I could’ve easily taught myself all that I “learned” in class. Not to be mean, but all the material is also online, often by better, more passionate instructors. You’re paying massive money just for a piece of paper which allows you employment opportunities, or so you hope. Also, the entire time you’re in school, you’re incurring massive expenses and not making any money. As the PhD student living in his car pointed out, when he calculated his expenses and bills, it became a rational decision to be homeless.

At another point in the documentary, you see some convicted felons getting out of jail. They were busted on drug charges. You ask them what they’re going to do and they have no idea. Nobody will hire them being ex-felons with drug charges. Nobody will rent them an apartment. And it’s not like crappy minimum wage jobs are going to offer them any future anyway; just look at the others living in tents on the sidewalk. So what now? As if years in jail wasn’t enough, now they’re let out, and it’s like, what now? There is no future. They go back to prostitution, dealing drugs, gang affiliations, etc. What else do you expect them to do? There’s nothing else! When we let these people out of jail, we don’t even give them bus money to get somewhere. One guy was like, well, I guess I’ll hop on the back of some train and see where it takes me. Geez.

These are our society’s invisible people. They fall through the cracks.

Ever flip on the news and watch them repeat some narrative over and over and over, hoping that it eventually sticks? Take a look at this video.

Bombshell, bombshell, bombshell. We’re at a turning point. We’re at a turning point. The walls are closing in! The walls are closing in! It’s the beginning of the end. It’s the beginning of the end. We’re at a tipping point. We’re at a tipping point.

Mark it down everyone! This is it! – a year later – Yeah, I’ve marked it down and I have more faith in that its-the-end-of-Trump astrologer standing under the darkened eclipse, than I do any of you. For years, these news networks just keep repeating the same talking points, like they were dictated on high from somewhere, and all these newscasters from both the left and the right go around broadcasting it. Nobody seems to hold them accountable.

I’m not a right-winger and I’m not a left-winger. This post is just me holding up absurdity and hoping you’ll realize that the mainstream news makes stuff up, all the time, just to rile us up.

As for the whole RussiaGate, Putin hijacked our election stuff, when all was said and done, when all the smoke cleared and the evidence was examined, what did we find? Basically nothing. In a big recent Congressional hearing, Google’s CEO was placed on the stand and we find out that Russia spent a whopping $4700 during the election! And the ads they ran? Some were pro-Trump, others pro-Hillary, and others neither. They were simply running some test click-bait campaigns and gathering some names and emails. Pretty amazing, for the price of a crappy used car, you can apparently hijack the most powerful nation on Earth… Or not, and this was all completely made up, like most things.

As Jimmy Dore points out in the video above, the left could be talking about getting us all universal healthcare, increasing wages, reforming Wall Street, ending the wars, investing in infrastructure, and other important issues, but do they? Nah, that would actually challenge the power structure and change people’s lives. Just focus all your attention and energy on these fake conspiracy theories instead! Distraction, distraction, distraction! The walls are closing in!

This is a near death experience of man who, when he died, reconnected with the deepest aspects of himself. He entered the true light, the clear light. He took off every false “garment” and false identity. When you’re dead (or dying), if you think, ‘I want to return to being who I truly am’, or ‘I wish to be one with God again’ (or God take me to Jesus), or ‘Higher self NOW’, this near-death account will give you a rough idea of what will happen to you. This account is taken from P.M.H. Atwater’s book ‘The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences’.

“I will skip the details of the death part, as it is far too embarrassing to admit that I had an accidental overdose. When I left my body it was similar to the first time, but much scarier. I thought that I was going crazy, that I must be losing my mind. I started up the same ‘funnel’ that I saw many years before. It had a much more intense, fragmented feeling and a certain ‘wrongness’ as my ego disintegrated into Spirit. I was frightened and totally out of control. Again I realized that I might as well let go and hang on for the ride, no matter what. The swirling funnel sucked my Spirit out of this world and my body. The intense Love and Peace and pleasure began to overcome me and I was no longer Ray. My ego dissolved, but I had the same sense of humor and the same hangups. I was once again escorted by a Being of immense Light and Love and Holiness, but this time the Being was taking me on a trip.”

Now this is very difficult to describe. Time ceased to exist. Past and future were completely nonexistent. I was traveling in an intense, burning ‘now.’ ‘Now’ was everything. I ceased to be a noun (person, place, or thing) and became a verb (an action). I was Ray-ing instead of Ray. I was given a huge message. The Being told me, ‘This is Who You Really Are,’ as the Universe opened up to me. I could not tell the difference between myself and the infinite galaxies. I became all-powerful and all-knowing — yet I was still Ray. Then the Being introduced me to another Being of the most Incredible Beauty and Love that anyone could comprehend. It was a Greater Being of intense Light. It was God. The first Being guided me to this Light and let it enfold and swallow me up. I became one with Love times a million, billion, trillion forever and ever. We were made of the same stuff! Every Being that had ever existed in all of Creation was now part of this Greater Whole Being called God. I was one with all of them, and yet I was still Ray — all powerful, little old me!

‘This is Who You Really Are,’ thundered the Light. It looked like a galaxy except the points of light were not stars, they were Beings. Every Being there was singing this incredibly beautiful music and praising God. After some indefinite length of Now-ness, I was told that I must go back. I was given another message that was very important. I was told I may return anytime I wished to. Coming back to my body felt like I was stuffed into a vessel of pain and exhaustion.”

I believe that religious imagery, such as the teachings of Jesus, are intended to help us humans attune our minds to this place and reconnect with it. The Christian scriptures say God is light, meaning illumination, all knowing, where nothing is hidden in darkness. We humans can’t see things when they’re in the dark, but in this place there’s so much light, everything can be seen and known. In other words, go back to where you have OM-niscent perception. Even that word, Om-niscient, contains ‘Om’, the backround vibrational sound/feeling of pure power you have there. Like take this image of Christ. They always have the big Light behind his head. He’s wanting to return you there.

And remember all the imagery of Jesus pointing to his heart chakra, telling you God is love? This is to reconnect you with this realm, where love is so thick it’s almost palpable. God is infinite unconditional love. Christ is very often depicted with open arms, beckoning you to come. You’re welcome here, you belong here. Come! And what about all the sin talk? What was that all about? It’s to alleviate you of guilt, and remove the feeling that you need to purify yourself in order to get in. Jesus was perfect, no fault, and he said he’d take care of it all. Jesus here is deeply connected to this perfect being dwelling in this place. This ties into the religious imagery of the cross. When you enter this place, you will die to self, similar to how Jesus died on the cross. In other words, your false mind and ego will dissolve. You have to give that up, but as you read in this account, Ray did give it up. He felt himself dissolving and said, “I might as well let go”. He let it happen. That IS the purification; at that point he was ‘perfect’ again. All sin (all your internal false guilts, feeling you’re unworthy, etc.) will be forgiven. Don’t worry about it! Leave behind your suffering and follow this perfect being to this realm of Light and perfection.

I’ve been fascinated with these ancient Gnostic scriptures dug up in Egypt. They’re interesting in that they describe all the strange phenomenon I read about in near death experiences and other strange literature. Take the book I referenced the other day.

As I recently talked about in a post, this books follows a prominent Yale psychologist’s journey with a trouble patient, who, under hypnotherapy, recalls past life after past life, and as she recalls past traumas from these former lives, she is cured of her psychological ailments. A fascinating and strange book. The psychologist is puzzled as this woman recalls dying in each former life, then being taken up into some light where these ‘masters’ dwell and give her spiritual lessons; afterwards they always send her her right back to live another miserable life on Earth. As you read the book, there is just so much suffering in each of her lives.

If you read these Gnostic scriptures, Jesus describes this incarnational loop de loop to his disciple John. The book is called The Secret Book Of John. It describes a great realm filled with aeons (great heavenly spirits), dwelling with the true God, which is basically the totality of existence being conscious of itself. One of these great heavenly aeons (Sophia) gets an idea to create a new heavenly being, but the other aeons of the heavens disapprove. Sophia goes ahead with it anyway and creates Yaldaboath, but things go awry. Yaldaboath has all kinds of problems and is a very flawed being, so flawed that Sophia has to hide this monstrosity away; the only heavenly being who even knows it exists is the Holy Spirit (God’s self-awareness manifest into thought). Long story short, this demiurge is the god of the Bible’s Old Testament.

Yaldaboath (who is also referred to as the demiurge), tries to usurp and enslave Sophia and then goes on to try to create his own realm. This was the origin of physicality. The demiurge proceeds to create a host of other spiritual beings who we now know as fallen angels. A big story unfolds, and I won’t go into all the details. It’s a long text. The demiurge ends up envying the heavenly beings and tries to create great illumined beings of his own, but ultimately fails. A big war breaks out. Then the demiurge along with his followers begin to scheme, and they devise a trap for heavenly aeons. They produce the physical body, made out of dirt and filth, filled with bacteria, worms, and decay, with the specific intent to torture and enslave heavenly hosts, filtering their perception of all the higher realms, and making them forget who they are. While they’re trapped, this will allow these demonic hosts to study them, learn the secret to their powers, and try to emulate them. As this war goes on, many of these fallen beings change their loyalties and want out. The demiurge responds by throwing them in this physical realm too! The aeons respond by sending down their best, who choose to voluntarily incarnate and be trapped in these rotten flesh bodies, to help others escape. The result is Buddha and other great sages. Ultimately even God’s consciousness chooses to incarnate in one of these flesh bodies, the result of which was Jesus Christ. These beings were sent in to both help the heavenly aeons trapped here, as well as the beings the demiurge created, telling them they can be reborn and get out of Yaladaboath’s realm of suffering, decay, and misery, and offering methods of escape.

Anyways, here is Christ talking about this incarnational loop de loop trap, and how to escape it. First he talks about the heavenly aeons who came down here, and what happens with them. They leave when they finally let go of any desire for physicality, basically self-immunizing themselves through incarnating over and over until they get tired of it and search for something greater. Next he talks about the fallen angels who search and connect with the Holy Spirit, they too will be free to leave and will be made perfect when entering the Pleroma, the higher realms of the heavenly aeons and God.

These texts often talk about the “artificial spirit”. The artificial spirit is the false consciousness of the physical body and our current mode of existence, created by the body and brain, which one must resist and ultimately desire no part of. When you finally desire purity and goodness more than the filthy impulses that the physical flesh produces, those pure desires will give you the strength to leave this place. Also, beings of the higher realms will be there to escort you out of here. Otherwise your desires for experiences within the flesh will pull you back here. The demiurge’s followers will come to you and they will cram you back into another body to keep you enslaved and trapped. Each time you’re crammed into a new body you will forget all that’s happened to you in the past, as this body filters out awareness of all higher consciousness, including your higher mind.

[ Jason Note: The heavenly beings who came down to help and are currently in physicality. How do they escape? ]

I asked the Savior, “Lord, will every soul be saved and enter the pure light?”

He replied, “You are asking an important question, one it will be impossible to answer for anyone who is not a member of the unmoved race. They are the people upon whom the Spirit of Life will descend and the power will enable them to be saved and to become perfect and worthy of greatness. They expunge evil from themselves and they will care nothing for wickedness, wanting only that which is not corrupt. They will achieve freedom from rage, envy, jealousy, desire, or craving.”

“The physical body will negatively effect them. They wear it as they look forward to the time when they will meet up with those who will remove it. Those people deserve indestructible eternal life. They endure everything, bearing up under everything that happens so that they can deserve the good and inherit life eternal.”

[ Jason note: I believe this passage pertains to the fallen ones who want to change their ways. They haven’t been through the purification process. They must themselves go through their own trap and self-immunize themselves]

Then I asked him, “Lord, what about the souls who didn’t do these things even though the Spirit of Life’s power descended on them?“

He answered, “If the Spirit descends to people they will be transformed and saved. The power descends on everyone and, without it, no one can even stand up. After they are born, if the Spirit of Life increases in them, power comes to them and their souls are strengthened. Nothing then can leave them astray into wickedness. But if the artificial spirit comes into people, it leads them astray.”

[ Jason note: If your goodness outweighs your desire for the things of the flesh, you will have the strength to get out of here. ]

Then I said, “Lord, when souls come out of the flesh where do they go?”

He replied, smiling, “If the soul is strong it has more of power than it has of the artificial spirit and so it flees from wickedness. With the assistance of the Incorruptible One that soul is saved and it attains eternal rest.”

[ Jason Note: Those with no idea is going on are sent on the incarnational loop-de-loop until they figure it out]

I then asked him, “Lord, what of the souls of the people who do not know whose people they are? Where do they go?”

He responded, “In those people the artificial spirit has grown strong and they have gone astray. Their souls are burdened, drawn to wickedness, and cast into forgetfulness.”

“When they come forth from the body, such a soul is given over to the powers created by the rulers, bound in chains, and cast into prison again. Around and around it goes until it manages to become free from forgetfulness through knowledge. And so, eventually, it becomes perfect and is saved.”

[ Jason note: When you’re sufficiently purified, even if you don’t understand the bigger picture of it all, at your death there will spiritual beings from the higher realms to escort you out ]

Then I asked, “Lord, how does the soul shrink down so as to be able to enter its mother or a man?

He was happy that I asked this and said, “You are truly blessed because you have understood. The soul should be guided by another within whom is the Spirit of Life. It will be saved by that means and accordingly will not have to enter a body again.

[ Jason note: Those who know what’s going on and think the demiurge’s ways are correct. ]

And I said, “Lord, what happens to the souls of people who achieved true knowledge, but who turned away from it?”

He said to me, “Demons of poverty will take them to a place where there is no possibility of repentance. There they will stay until the time when those who blasphemed against the spirit will be tortured and subjected to punishment forever.”

I’ll share one last passage from the Secret Book Of John. This time going into depth on what the “aritificial spirit” is. It’s time itself. It’s living within a physical fleshly body. It’s the unpredictability of life with all of its suffering and ignorance.

I asked, “Lord, where did the artificial spirit come from?”And he told me:

Three Plots against Humanity

The Mother-Father is mercifulA Holy Spirit sympathizing with us.Through the Epinoia of the Providence of the lightIt raises up the children of the perfect raceRaising up their thought, their light eternal.

When the Chief Archon learned that they were elevated above himAnd that their mental ability surpassed hisHe wanted to put a stop to their thoughtBut he did not know the extent of their mental superiorityAnd he could not stop them.

He made a plan with his demonsWho are his powersEach of them fornicated with Wisdom (Sophia)And produced fateThe last variety of imprisonment.

Fate changes unpredictablyIt is of different sorts just as the demons are of different sorts.Fate is hard.Fate is stronger thanThe gods, the authorities, the demons, the generations of peopleWho are caught up in it.

Out of fate emergedSinfulness, violence, blasphemy, forgetfulness, ignorance,Weighty commandmentsHeavy sinsTerrible fear.In this way all of creation became blind,Ignorant of God above everything.

Because of imprisonment in forgetfulnessThey are unaware of their sins,They are bound into periods of time and seasonsBy fate who is lord of it all.

I find all of this fascinating. In the book I spoke of earlier, where the woman (Catherine) was incarnating over and over and over, she fits perfectly into the description a heavenly being who came down to help but has now been trapped and must undergo purification by living over and over. Why do I suspect she is one of the heavenly beings who is trapped here? Catherine had no interest in anything the ‘masters’ had to say. She found their pseudo-spirituality “creepy” and wanted no part of it. It was the book’s author who was enamored with their teachings, not Catherine, the one who revealed it all.

This is going to be a post on what I feel spirituality is, and what a person becomes when they lack a deep spiritual aspect to their life. I’m going to break this down using two different models, one to explain the general dynamic of a person who lacks spirituality (spiritless people), and those who have a deep sense of spirituality (pursuers of Christ-consciousness).

People who lack a spiritual component to their lives, I’m going to call ‘spiritless’. They tend to follow the model below.A completely spiritless person is guided solely by external influences, since there is no deep inner core within themselves to impose any sense of their own will on the world. They’re basically machines. They perceive things through their senses, which then get processed by their brain. These sense impressions first get processed into desires and emotions of all kinds, which are all over the place. These emotional feelings within them proceed to produce thoughts, which are mostly rationalizations for why they feel the way they do, or are concocted attempts satisfy all the inner contradictory longings. Since the external world is so chaotic and all over the place, so is this person’s inner mental life.

Since these people are governed by external influences, they are a slave to their emotions and thoughts. They have no awareness of any deeper aspects of themselves, so they completely identify with their thoughts and feelings; they therefore cannot step outside of thought and emotion, examine these components of consciousness, and guide the process. They see things around them, these experiences make impressions on them, longings are created, and they constantly chase this or that, hoping it will end the chaos happening within them.

The tragedy of the spiritless cycle is that the world outside of us is filled with false promises of happiness. These external influences guiding their behavior are not likely to end up in happiness and meaningful fulfillment. The type of consciousness the human brain produces is rather limited. It will constantly send you on wild goose chases, promising fulfillment if you acquire this, accomplish that, or achieve whatever. Then you work your tail end off, you finally acquire what you were promised, probably to realize it wasn’t all you believed it would be; sadly, the human brain will take no responsibility. It’ll basically just be like, well, now pursue this instead! Go go go! And until you get up and go, it will create feelings of depression, jealousy, and ill-conceived hopes that, “If only I’d done things differently.” And it will have all kinds of conjectures (likely faulty) as to what went wrong.

The real key point is that, when dealing with the normal mind’s promises, happiness and fulfillment are almost always something to be obtained at some later place and time once some conditions are met. Once you achieve those conditions (if you’re ever able to), you’ll finally reach that supposedly wonderful place. When you arrive, you may feel good for a short time, but (in my experience anyway) you’re ultimately emotionally underwhelmed and unsatisfied, and the brain blames you. You weren’t good enough, you weren’t pretty enough, you weren’t smart enough, you made a wrong decision at this juncture, you trusted the wrong people, etc. Now be depressed, be unhappy, and go through some process of pulling yourself out by chasing something else. Get back up! Get back in the game! Get psyched! There’s more fish in the sea! You’ll win the game next time! Chase this other thing instead!

If you finally learn this “game”, this stupidity, and really sit down to meditate and self-analyze what’s going on with your mind and emotions, you’ll realize the thoughtless, ill-conceived, stupid forces which you were letting guide your behavior, simply because you lacked any awareness. You just had internal feelings and proclivities, and you let them push you here and there. From my own analysis of myself, these proclivities are poorly thought out. A thoughtful person can look out at this universe and see a lot of the stupidity all around of us. Believe it or not, that stupidity lives alive and well in all of us as well.

But there is self-awareness, thank goodness. If you come to a point where you’re attempting to step outside your own mind and emotions, and look at them as an observer from above, looking at the process and trying to gain better control over it, congratulations, you’re now starting the spiritual journey. If you keep at it, over time you will eventually realize that the path is to pursue Christ consciousness.

The first thing you’re going to ask is what is it that has stepped outside of the mind and emotions, and is looking at them from “above”. It’s very puzzling but you’ll realize that you can do it. Whatever this observer is, it is NOT anything that you perceive, or else how could it exist beyond it? However, if you self-reflect and develop this perception, this ability, for lack of a better word, you’ll realize that you’re like one of those old phone-operators in the 1950’s, with all the ports and wires, and when certain signals come into consciousness, you can redirect them here or there, nullify them, mute them, etc.

Just to give an example, say you’re in the grocery store. You walk by an aisle filled with cake and donuts. Your brain says, “Oh, it looks so good. Buy it! Buy it!” That’s the impulse. If you give into it, that signal gets sent to the imagination, which will attempt to amplify the signal. It then puts an image in your mind of you laying the box on your kitchen table at home, opening it up, and biting into one of those donuts. There it goes! More and more, amplify, amplify, until you break down, buy the donuts, eat them, then feel guilty because you know they’re going to make you fat — but you don’t want to be fat. That’s the spiritless cycle. It’s contradictory and makes no sense. It creates impulses, tells you it’ll be oh so great, then you give into the impulse, and it guilt trips you and makes you depressed.

This is where self-awareness comes in. You stand above that, you see the impulse to buy donuts, and you send a command from above, “We’ve done this before. It doesn’t work out. No. I refuse.” Then it creates the impulse again. You have to say “No” again, and again, and again. If that impulse wont leave you alone, you close your eyes, focus your attention on the point between your eye-brows, and then just breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, just focusing all attention on your breath. You then drain that “circuit” within your brain of its energy, and redirect it to concentration on your breath. From my own experience I can tell you this — you’re on a ship, and if you let your sails be blown around by every whim and desire, you’re going to crash, sink, and burn. Your favorite idea must become “No”.

The human body is a machine, and this is you taking control of the machine. The more control you have over this machine, the more free will you have. However, this free will requires awareness. But don’t get too excited. In order to care enough to be aware you have to have formed an identity. Who do I want to be? You’re just now at the beginning of the journey.

In the donut example, you have to have set down a new law, “I do not want to be fat.” That’s free will speaking. Then when impulses arise which don’t line up with the objective you set, you have to be self-aware enough to realize that it doesn’t line up with your identity and stop that impulse in its tracks. You have to have taken the time to watch your own mind and emotions, and really thought about what was taking place. The best way to do this is during meditation. You sit still, quiet the mind, and you self-reflect. You ask yourself, why do I feel this way, when did I start feeling this way? You watch events unfold and you realize what’s going on. What triggers this emotion in me? Why does this upset me? Why do I enjoy this so much? What am I hoping to achieve by doing this action? Has this pattern of behavior worked for me before?

So yeah, we’re now at a big cross-roads. Who do you want to be? The possibilities seem endless. You could pursue just about anything. How will you pilot your body and mind around? What will you do? What will you think about? What will you pursue? “I don’t want to be fat” seems like a rather shallow goal. Maybe that doesn’t matter. But what does matter? That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? I’m guessing you want to feel happy and fulfilled. You want to feel satisfied with your life.

I will now assume that’s your goal. There’s a series of important questions you now need to ask yourself. I think the most primary is to ask whether happiness is dependent upon achieving various goals. If you haven’t already in your life, I encourage you to take several of your deepest desires, pursue them will full force, and actually achieve them. Then hold your mind accountable. Is it all you imagined it would be? Did that new bigger house make you happy? Now that you’re married, did a spouse make you happy? You’re sitting in that brand new car. Do you feel any different than you did before? So you finally got your degree and are working in some brand new career. How do you feel? Any different than before? Be mindful of the before and after. If these things made you feel better, I congratulate you and am happy for you. I truly am. But, and this is a big but, if not, be aware of what just happened.

If you’re like me, your answer will be that you achieved your goals and felt no different than before; I felt (at times) short bursts of temporary joy and then ultimately felt underwhelmed and cheated. So naturally I began to suspect that nothing (no-thing) will change how I feel inside. That’s quite a dismal prospect.

So what then? I started pursuing meditation.

If you look on the flow-chart of Christ-Consciousness cycle, when I first started getting into meditation, I learned that I can cut-off the thoughts and emotions. That was huge for me. I learned that I can just exist, aware of what’s happening, but am able to turn on/off various emotions through focus of attention. Very neat and transformative stuff. I was simply my spirit, for lack of a better word, watching myself live my life.

The one thing I initially did was simply unplug all the plugs in the big switchboard. This was because, due to my own mental programming over the years, I was such a negative person, and my emotions were very negative. There was a lot of anger, depression, and other bad things in there. I remember thinking, geez, my mind needs cleaned out. This is going to take some work. The first time I learned that I can turn all that off, I was just like, wow!

A lot of people become alcoholics, drug addicts, and other things all to avoid their own, mostly self-created, negative mind. The mind can be your own worst tormentor. Then I’m like, oh wow, I can turn it off! I can turn it off! I’ve written on my blog that ever since this discovery, I haven’t known anything like depression. There are small bouts of frustration, like if I’m playing a video game and die or something, but none of that overwhelming despair at life in general.

The next step was self-awareness, watching my life carefully from “above”, and looking at what events and situations brought happiness into my life. What was the pattern?

I found that I highly approve of any situation where there is deep love. Not passion, but unconditional love. Mothers caring for their children, teachers caring about their students, doctors who work hard to heal the sick, and so forth.

I admired people and situations where there was peace, such as monks who would not retaliate even when violently attacked. They seemed far more highly evolved and spiritual beings in my eyes. I reasoned they must be connected to some higher realm to have the mental strength and confidence to do that.

Patience seemed extremely important, especially since we all come up short. Watching teachers berate students who were slow on the uptake rubbed me the wrong way.

Kindness of all kinds was wonderful. When people were kind to me, I found it resonated with something deep within me, and I felt an obligation that it should be reciprocated.

I found it superior to have faith that good things are going to happen, and to believe in a good future, ever striving to make it happen, as opposed to negative people who simply complain and do nothing.

I found self-control to be of utmost importance. The body creates many desires that are not conducive to a happy life. They must be suppressed and well managed.

These were the sorts of things I saw when self-reflecting, and are traits which I’ve been working to strengthen and reinforce in my mind. As for the negativity and garbage, I’ve been constantly keeping an eye on it, and trying to flush it out. In general, I’ve found that the stage and stage-props (the the people, situations, and places) on which events were happening was relatively unimportant. Did the situation have those key components I just listed? That was most important. Otherwise it isn’t worth experiencing.

For me, my own goal seemed to be to make my mind a beautiful place, and that that was the best gift I could give the world. My mind needs to be brought it into conformance to some beautiful ideal. In this process of striving to do this, and meditating, I found I started to connect to some superior source of consciousness, beyond myself.

I came to learn this is what Christians refer to as the Holy Spirit. I had not known this spiritual being/force before, but then again, my mind had never been quiet, and I wasn’t exactly listening or open to the sorts of things it would’ve had to say.

If you don’t believe in any of this, I suppose I don’t blame you. Years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it either.

But Christ-consciousness is the total opposite of living spiritless. It’s about connecting to an essence deep within you, in stillness, listening quietly, letting it be the primary source of your thoughts, and then letting your emotions and actions flow from that source. To what extent this being is my own self essence deep within me, or whether it is separate from me but is working together with my spirit, or what, I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve found I never regret listening to it. It is the same source as your conscience, but normally people do not listen to it unless it’s screaming at you and you’re about to do something stupid. However, it will talk to you in stillness.

The first time I ever listened to it was during a semester where I taught an electronics lab. In meditation, it told me to love the students unconditionally. To speak positive encouragement to them, in all that they do. To always reinforce confidence in them that they can achieve results and do all that was asked of them. To offer them the best feedback I could, in kindness, and offer infinite forgiveness. To stay behind after normal hours, helping them build circuits. To order them pizzas in class, out of my own pocket. To lay out all the electronics components for them before each lab. It gave me advice of this nature. The more I listened to it, it had a certain type of excellence and love about it that I greatly admired. I wanted to be like it. I obeyed and treated the students in this way. At the end of the semester, the students were coming up to me shaking my hand, telling me it was the best experience they have ever had learning. They wanted to take me out to drinks, buy me dinner, others baked me cookies, I would enter the lab room and see murals on the chalkboards, dedicated to me, depicting me as a super-hero.

Many of these students are scientists and atheists, people who would scoff at the idea of God, but if only they would knew that the force that was operating in that classroom, that I was channeling each day in meditation and prayer, was the same aspect that caused them to love me like they did. I simply was a vehicle channeling this energy. I feel they would love this Holy Spirit, if they knew it.

You can be down and out, and sit down, quietly, in meditation, and call on this Holy Spirit, and it will balance all energies within you and leave you in perfect peace. I’ve done it so many times now, it’s beyond doubt. But then I got to wondering, why did I never experience any of this before? Then I dusted off my Bible, which I hadn’t read in a long time. I did not have the proper conception of God, nor was I keeping the proper commands Christ had left us.

“If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

— words of Jesus Christ, John 14

If you think communicating with this being is a ticket to getting what you “want”, you’re quite mistaken. In my experience, this Holy Spirit follows a yogi adage I read in a Kriya yoga book.

“Do not do what you want, and then you may do what you like.”– Indian Yogi

It’s a teacher and you’re a student. You don’t bark commands at it, you listen. If you’re humble enough, it will direct you to ways of living that will make your life more loving, peaceful, and meaningful. When you’re forging this identity, if you agree to follow the deep universal laws of creation, loving unconditionally, etc., this teacher will come to you. When you’re finally at a place where you realize, “I don’t know what I’m doing”, and have tried everything you’ve thought to try, and will listen, the teacher will come, that is, if you open yourself to it.

But you don’t have to. You can live spiritless, and be blown around by every random desire and emotion, though your mind will be a place of turmoil and you’ll suffer a great deal. You will be a slave of this realm, this strange matrix we’re in. It will be your pilot, and I do not think you want that. I encourage you to connect to ever deeper aspects of yourself, expand your awareness, and take control of your life. But who will you choose to be? Not an easy question. So last of all, once you are piloting your own life, do not feel you’re above the ultimate laws of all creation. Love others as yourself. Love unconditionally. Be kind, patient, and exercise self-control. This is for everyone’s good, including your own. If you’re serious about living right, and quiet your mind, if you call out to this great cosmic teacher, it will come, and will help you in life, give you its peace, and lead you to ever greater meaning and wonderful things. I personally vouch for the Holy Spirit, and Christ. Whatever they are, they are good.